During the 1990's, welfare reform was essential in regards to addressing federal policy issues. Concentration around issues such as limits on cash funding, work requirements, and qualifications were some major focuses. The 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, which established Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) block grants, provided necessary services that enable families to find employment and remain self-sufficient. This act changed the structure of welfare payments and added new criteria to states that received welfare funding.
AFDC also known as Aid to Families with Dependent Children, was a federal assistance program which was in effect from 1935 to 1996 and was stopped and then modified into Temporary Assistance for Needy Families because AFDC encouraged women to have children in order to receive financial aid. Gais states that "one other consequence is that the simple distinction between state and county supervised welfare systems under AFDC has been blurred, as many state supervised systems create more decentralized structures" (Gais, pg. 2). I'd rather a work incentive program and education requirement to establish welfare needs. Programs such as grants for housing and daycare attached to it so that if you have kids, they put you to work and you get a loan for school would have been beneficial to the AFDC. Instead the government sought a better solution; TANF.
Policy changes, funding flexibility, and devolution in welfare reform in 1996 were not the only factors motivating these efforts; other factors, such as leadership, governance structures, and community involvement play critical roles. Nevertheless, welfare reform has made a considerable difference by strengthening the signals that welfare is no longer a long-term option, that providing services to assist families to achieve self- sufficiency is important and necessary, and by giving states and localities the flexibility, and the means, to support system building. Perhaps the single most significant contribution was to give local managers the sense that they have control over the system, that their efforts to plan and implement new strategies to improve services and create comprehensive systems are making a difference.
Currently, in our effort to identify best practices, communities are struck by the fact that there are relatively few stand-out cases of innovative and broad-gauged management systems for human services.
Reference:

Kreitner, R PHD and Kinicki, A DBA, (2013), Organizational Behavior tenth addition, New York, NY McGraw-Hill/Irwin.

Thomas L. Gais, Welfare Reform Findings in Brief, The Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, Albany, NY, March 1, 2002, p. 2.